There are 2 especially traumatic and dramatic CHRISTIAN scenarios with the cross.

1) Christianity is true and the cross is SACRED.

2) Christianity is true yet the cross is EVIL. IN SCENARIO 2 The scriptures which say the cross of Christ is sacred mean Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred. They don't mean a pagan instrument of torture and execution is sacred to the Creator of the Universe.  The logic is similar to the Commandment against graven images. God is sacred but graven images of God are evil.

1) IF THE CROSS IS SACRED TO GOD, perhaps it is the seal of God mentioned in Revelation 9.

2) IF GOD SAYS THE CROSS IS EVIL then it is sacrilege to say the cross is sacred.  If the cross is evil, perhaps the cross is the mark of the beast.

If the cross is the sacred seal of God, and if you simply must put the cross on your forehead during the Great Tribulation, to escape Hell...

But if the cross is the mark of the beast, not the seal of God, and if you put the mark of the beast on your forehead...

Either No Evil is reflected in the cross, because the cross is sacred in the sight of God.

Or Else...

The cross is EVIL, because the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses are reflected in the cross, rather as the evils of the Nazis are reflected in the Nazi swastika.

Paul Johnson wrote in his 'A History of Christianity':

'Tertullian broke with the Church [Rome]...Julian claims Catholics slaughtered "heretics" with state military support. Whole communities were butchered...in the 5th century there were over 100 statutes against heresy. The state now attacked heresy as it had once attacked Christianity...Jerome describes horrible tortures inflicted on a woman accused of adultery [inflicted by the Catholic-State]. In the late 4th century there was despotism in Christendom. The rack and red-hot plates were used. Ammianus gives many instances of torture...the Inquisition was born...Spain was staging pogroms of Jews by the time Augustine became a bishop...Inquisition: anonymous informers, accusations of personal enemies allowed, no right of defending council...Possession of scriptures in any language forbidden...from 1080 onward there were many instances of the Pope, councils and Bishops forbidding the Bible to laymen...people burned for reading the Bible...'

Regarding Anglican evils, one of Lord Byron's first speeches in Parliament was a diatribe against the Nottingham Lace Industry, an industry which drove children to work in factories for 16 or even 20 hours every day. The children would, often enough, fall asleep at their tasks, and would then tumble into the iron rotors.

Bury writes in 'History of the Later Roman Empire' (vol. i. p. 12) that the Catholic emperors in Constantinople, following the example of the pagan Emperors, took the epithets 'sacred' and 'divine' and insisted that these be applied to themselves.

Bury writes, p. 15: 'The oriental conception of divine royalty is now formally expressed in the diadem; and it affects all that pertains to the Emperor. His person is divine; all that belongs to him is "sacred." Those who come into his presence perform the act of adoration; they kneel down and kiss the purple.' Bury states, p. 14, that the Patriarch refused to crown the Emperor Anastasius unless he signed a written oath that he would introduce no novelty into the Church.

Might there be an evil absurdity lurking somewhere in the spectacle of Christian Emperors claiming to be sacred and divine, and demanding that their subjects adore them, and demanding these subjects prostrate themselves before them, while also promising to bring no innovations into...